330 replies to this topic

[.fonclea.]

Wow, the socialist brainwashing is so self-evident in your phraseology that your statement logically reduces to.....!

and you americans are allways refering to socialism or communsim when you disagree with someone or somthing, you are brainwhashed, but Carter is not your president anymore ????

all other countries are pretty awful in objective comparison.

awful in what ? ....true in spain people live longer than you and they don't eat all this pills to extend their lifes, they apparently don't need them. same i france, japan, germany.... actually all most occidental contries. Those contries do all have a hleathcare system.... buh might be a coincidence.

For example, here's a good summary of why the Scandinavian countries are only about half as well-off as they pretend to be.

ouuaaaaa valid news from free talk live, an obscure radio..... now i know where you get all this long expreience.

There is a word for people who mindlessly parrot failed attempts at witticisms that already were thoroughly debunked with facts and logic...

There is a word for didlessly people who judge a law that has not been applied yet: idiot.

Edited by .fonclea., 02 April 2010 - 01:52 PM.

[DairyProducts]

For starters the US has 56 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities in the Social Security program alone"

56 trillion? You sure its not 5.6?

[RighteousReason]

There is a word for didlessly people who judge a law that has not been applied yet: idiot.

Thanks Nancy

“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”
http://blog.heritage...-what-is-in-it/

Edited by RighteousReason, 02 April 2010 - 08:30 PM.

[RighteousReason]

For starters the US has 56 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities in the Social Security program alone"

56 trillion? You sure its not 5.6?

hmm sort of pulled that out of my ass... I wrote a paper about all this 5 years ago in high school.

Here is what I said then (this was before I had any clue about politics and had no leaning whatsoever to the left or right)

The national debt is a major economic problem because we are promising money that we simply don’t have. Keynes believed that although the government actually should run deficits during recessions, the debt should be offset by surpluses gathered during prosperous times. Despite this, the United States government has continued to increase the debt through good times, and especially bad times. If we ignore the problem, the debt will not just go away, but continue to increase until our economy and society are overrun.

Currently, the national debt is over 7,000,000,000,000 dollars. On top of this huge amount, nearly 2 billion dollars of debt is accumulated each day. If every man, woman, and child were given equal portions of the debt, each person in America would owe over 25,000 dollars! Another disturbing factor that makes the debt even more difficult of a problem is that the debt is actually earning interest. In 2004, America paid 322 billion dollars on interest payments alone to the national debt. This is more than five times the amount of money spent on education, and more money spent than on all but two departments of the government. The scope of this problem is enormous; if all taxes in America were doubled, or if the entire department of defense and the armed forces were completely shut down, neither of these would provide enough money to solve the problem alone. The figure of seven trillion does not even do justice to the actual amount of debt. Including “hidden” debts of unfunded liabilities (that is, the difference, valued in today's dollars, between what current law requires the government to pay and what current law provides in projected tax revenues), the debt comes out to be closer to 53 trillion dollars. With an approximate GDP of $11 trillion in the United States today, that is almost 500 percent of our GDP owed in national debt!

The two major contributors to the national debt are Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is a social insurance program that covers most of the United States’ work force. It is usually a basic retirement program, to which other benefits (such as disability) are added. The United States has $12.7 trillion dollars promised in retirement benefits in Social Security that cannot be paid. Again, this figure alone is more than the entire United States GDP. The magnitude of debt in Medicare is even more staggering. Medicare is a federal health program for retirees and the disabled. Currently there is over $30 trillion in unfunded liabilities for people now working and in the system. This also takes into account 7 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities for the new prescription drug program going into effect in 2006. The amount of the unfunded liabilities for the prescription drug program alone is almost equal to the current national debt. One of the biggest reasons these figures are significant is that the baby boomers, those Americans born between 1946 and 1964, account for a very sizable portion of the work force. This is a major issue because the baby boomers are going to be reaching retirement age very soon, and these unfunded liabilities are going to be due. That means that all those trillions and trillions of dollars that have been promised to up and coming retirees will not be able to be paid.

http://www.enterstag...03/1003debt.htm
http://www.factcheck...article139.html
http://www.magnolia..../aphbudget.html
http://www.federalbudget.com/
http://zfacts.com/p/...ional-debt.html
http://www.businessf...com/debt01.html
http://www.ncpa.org/.../pd030999d.html
http://www.mises.org...px?control=1423
http://www.straightd...tionaldebt.html
http://www3.uakron.e...44/debt_hw.html
http://www.whatreall....com/ndebt.html
http://www.independe...l.asp?newsID=31

Here are some of the updated figures:

The national debt has now passed $12.3 trillion. (Noting how quickly this number has been increasing, the national debt first passed $7.0 trillion January 15, 2004, and then passed the $8.0 trillion mark October 18, 2005.) Consequently, on January 28, 2010, the United States Senate agreed to raise the legal limit on government borrowing to a record $14.3 trillion — an increrase $1.9 trillion or 13 percent. Raising the ceiling imposed on the national debt has now become a yawn-producing vote in the Congress. Because of the Treasury's financial legerdemain, the real number is frequently slightly above this ceiling.

The ratio of national debt to Gross Domestic Prouct (GDP) is a critical measurement. With the GDP currently $14.4 trillion, the national debt is fast-approaching the 90 percent tape — the ratio beyond which even Third World nations fear to tread.

Another critical ratio is the relationship between the Federal Budget and the national debt. The Federal Budget for FY-2011 currently under consideration is $3.8 trillion. This projects a deficit of $1.3 trillion or 9.0 percent of GDP. (The current deficit for FY-2010 is approximately $1.6 trillion.) The Administration's announced goal is to reduce the annual deficit to 3.0 percent of GDP — the long-term level economists believe is the highest sustainable.

Foreign governments and investors hold $3.43 trillion of this debt — approximately 24 percent of our GDP. The major creditors are the People's Republic of China ($798.9 billion), Japan ($751.5 billion), the United Kingdom ($249.3 billion), OPEC nations ($185.3 billion), and Caribbean banking centers ($171.7 billion); even Russia currently holds $118.0 billion of the US national debt.

Per capita, the national debt is more than $40,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The interest costs to service this debt is in excess of $383 billion a year (FY-2009) — approximately 20 percent of our total tax revenues. The interest costs are now more than the Federal government spends on homeland security, education, environment, housing, veterans programs, transportation and agriculture combined. Our annual appropriations for virtually all other Federal activities pale in contrast with the line item for Federal debt service.

http://www.businessf...com/debt01.html


The figure for total unfunded debts that I have more recently seen floating around is about 100 trillion.

Edited by RighteousReason, 02 April 2010 - 08:51 PM.

[madanthony]

It's always fun to watch the ridiculous lengths people will go to justify maintaining a privilege which they feel makes them superior to another "less privileged" group.

Get over it. Universal Healthcare is coming. Equality before the law means EXACTLY THAT. NO-ONE HAS PRIVILEGED STATUS. If it is a right for ONE, it is a right for ALL.

All the rest of this arguing is about "Wahhhhh I want to maintain my feelings of superiority!"

Well said! I soooo agree!

[bobdrake12]

It's always fun to watch the ridiculous lengths people will go to justify maintaining a privilege which they feel makes them superior to another "less privileged" group.

Get over it. Universal Healthcare is coming. Equality before the law means EXACTLY THAT. NO-ONE HAS PRIVILEGED STATUS. If it is a right for ONE, it is a right for ALL.

All the rest of this arguing is about "Wahhhhh I want to maintain my feelings of superiority!"

Well said! I soooo agree!

This is a universal health care bill?

http://fdlaction.fir...alth-care-bill/

The bill is neither universal health care nor universal health insurance.

Per the CBO:

•Total uninsured in 2019 with no bill: 54 million
•Total uninsured in 2019 with Senate bill: 24 million (44%)

Edited by bobdrake12, 03 April 2010 - 12:32 AM.

[bobdrake12]

The national debt has now passed $12.3 trillion. (Noting how quickly this number has been increasing, the national debt first passed $7.0 trillion January 15, 2004, and then passed the $8.0 trillion mark October 18, 2005.) Consequently, on January 28, 2010, the United States Senate agreed to raise the legal limit on government borrowing to a record $14.3 trillion — an increrase $1.9 trillion or 13 percent. Raising the ceiling imposed on the national debt has now become a yawn-producing vote in the Congress. Because of the Treasury's financial legerdemain, the real number is frequently slightly above this ceiling.

RighteousReason,

When we increase our National Debt, we also increase the interest we pay on the National Debt.

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That way we would pay $0 interest charges.

Edited by bobdrake12, 03 April 2010 - 12:45 AM.

[rwac]

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That we we would pay $0 interest charges.

Too much money in circulation brings inflation, and that's just about the last thing we need right now.

[bobdrake12]

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That we we would pay $0 interest charges.

Too much money in circulation brings inflation, and that's just about the last thing we need right now.

And the Federal Reserve has being performing a dismal job of keeping inflation down.

[rwac]

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That we we would pay $0 interest charges.

That's the nuclear option, though. It will essentially mean that we can pay all our creditors with cheap dollars.
That will drag them into trouble, start a trade war ...
And if say China decides to dump US securities, we're in for a whole lot of inflation, much more than planned for.
Sure, they will get hurt too, but it's not clear if anyone will be the victor.

What we have now is the economic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction.

And the Federal Reserve has being performing a dismal job of keeping inflation down.

Yes, but inflation can always get worse. It's not been so bad since the 80s.

Edited by rwac, 03 April 2010 - 02:35 AM.

[Connor MacLeod]

There is a word for didlessly people who judge a law that has not been applied yet: idiot.

Thanks Nancy

“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”
http://blog.heritage...-what-is-in-it/

It's kinda like Christmas.

Edited by Connor MacLeod, 03 April 2010 - 03:21 AM.

[Ghostrider]

What people everywhere are increasingly forgetting is that YOU are the government. This is the basis for democracy.

Not completely...I tried voting, it didn't work. ;-) But yes, on average, the entire voting group gets what it deserves, but not individuals.

You choose who is going to represent your interests (as 'we' the people) the most. Thus was government regulation born. Setting limits on how much cyanide and poisons go into your food? Probably a good idea, no? Do you think corporations would self-regulate themselves and cut their profits to stop poisoning you?

More like you get to choose which corrupt political leader you get to support. Who will use your tax dollars to secure his / her future elections. Politicians (on both sides) have mastered manipulation of the public.

While having no government is a great idea from the perspective of taxation.. It's not realistic. There's a reason thing have developed to the level they are at now.

Things have not developed to an ideal state. The only way to get there in my opinion is more competition among governments. As a consumer, the only way to ensure you are not getting ripped off is through free and open competition. It's no different at the government level. And remember, what the majority chooses is not the ideal. If 90% of the people here in the US were ok with rape, rape would be legal.

Watch the movie Idiocracy sometime...it's actually a really stupid movie and not one of my favorites, but kinda illustrates my points about how Democracy can go wrong. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Edited by Ghostrider, 03 April 2010 - 09:55 AM.

[bobdrake12]

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That we we would pay $0 interest charges.

That's the nuclear option, though. It will essentially mean that we can pay all our creditors with cheap dollars.
That will drag them into trouble, start a trade war ...
And if say China decides to dump US securities, we're in for a whole lot of inflation, much more than planned for.
Sure, they will get hurt too, but it's not clear if anyone will be the victor.

What we have now is the economic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction.

And the Federal Reserve has being performing a dismal job of keeping inflation down.

Yes, but inflation can always get worse. It's not been so bad since the 80s.

At no time has this current admininstration considered printing its money rather than borrowing it. The last administration to have printed its money was Kennedy's.

The concern China has is that our National Debt continues to mount.



http://www.reuters.c...E61029V20100201

Analysts View: 2010 budget deficit to hit record (excerpt)

(Reuters) - Following are analysts' comments after U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday projected in his budget for the fiscal year to September 30, 2011 the U.S. budget deficit would soar to a fresh record of $1.56 trillion in 2010.

NANCY VANDEN HOUTEN, ECONOMIST, STONE & MCCARTHY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY:

"It's very much a political document that contains the administration's agenda.

"These proposals would have many hurdles to clear, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to see a large deficit.

"Anything between $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion wouldn't surprise me (because) tax receipts are still quite weak and costs aren't going down.
The spending freeze does little to solve longer term problems but is something.

Interest on our national debt is signifcantly increasing our projected indebtedness in the out years.




Inflation under control since 1980?

Edited by bobdrake12, 03 April 2010 - 10:58 AM.

[rwac]

At no time has this current admininstration considered printing its money rather than borrowing it. The last administration to have printed its money was Kennedy's.

The concern China has is that our National Debt continues to mount.

Thing is, considering printing money in public would be a threat to China more or less.
So talking about it may limit our options, and make other countries less likely to buy our securities.

They're right. We might lose our AAA rating sometime.
Already, the US is paying more money on debt than Warren Buffet...

[bobdrake12]

At no time has this current admininstration considered printing its money rather than borrowing it. The last administration to have printed its money was Kennedy's.

The concern China has is that our National Debt continues to mount.

Thing is, considering printing money in public would be a threat to China more or less.
So talking about it may limit our options, and make other countries less likely to buy our securities.

They're right. We might lose our AAA rating sometime.
Already, the US is paying more money on debt than Warren Buffet...

China has been concerned about the massive debt we have piled up where it appears that we have no intention of paying it off.

China is even more concerned about our intent to dramatically increase our massive debt as a percent to GDP.

In any event, I look for inflation to continue including this year and the price of gold and silver to continue to go up.

Edited by bobdrake12, 03 April 2010 - 07:03 PM.

[Alex Libman]

Wonderful conspiracy theories you have there.

Thank you. There's plenty more where they came from. Many are so well supposed by evidence that they may simply be referred to as historical facts. And many are still speculative, but plausible and not disproven.

The trouble is you seem to think laws can be passed to stop technological progress. They've tried. At best, it delays developments.

Laws do have a substantial effect on the economy, and over time this effect has an exponential impact on the technological progress of a society. The laws may be marketed as having the best of intentions, and many "true believer" politicians actually intend to do good, but government intervention in the marketplace does have devastating effects on economic and thus scientific growth. And you say "delays developments" as if it's harmless - everyone in the world dies a few years sooner than they might have if not for the effect socialist governments have had over the past century alone! For our generation of transhumanist wannabes it might in fact make the difference between dying in our first century and reaching the escape velocity toward an indefinite lifespan!

[...] And the Republican party has been attempting it for over a decade.

Don't get into a Republican-hating contest with a principled libertarian. You will lose.

Fear the state if you choose, but the state you fear is one that exists only in your mind.

Ah, subjectivism rears its ugly head... You are not being forced to pay for and obey a power monopoly you disagree with! It's an illllluuusioon!

From the real trends in politics, not the ones screamed about by any political agenda, but the actual events occuring, the only state which will eventually emerge is a technocratic democracy. Fear what you will. Support whoever you wish. I am simply reporting the reality as I have seen it developing.

Nothing in history is inevitable. There are many paths the human civilization may yet take, from a stagnant "environmentalist" dystopia to an intergalactic civilization many orders of magnitude above what we are currently capable of imagining. That said, democracy doesn't seem like a political system that can stay stable for long, because it exists only on the basis of mass delusion (i.e. divine right of governments, the magical ballot box, superhuman representatives that hear all prayers, etc, etc, etc), while at the same time it doesn't do much to silence the people like myself who point that fact out.

As ever-more people snap out of statist brainwashing (thank you Internet!), democracies will be forced to transform: either into more dictatorial systems that do more to control dangerous speech, or into societies with much greater levels of individual liberty, which is what I advocate. The former path is more likely if a strong-enough world government can be imposed quickly enough, because intergovernmental competition naturally encourages the latter. The greatest problem with "technocratic democracy" is that the smartest people vote with their feet and leave, and sooner or later you simply run out of competent people to tax!

and you americans are allways refering to socialism or communsim when you disagree with someone or somthing, you are brainwhashed, but Carter is not your president anymore ????

I'm not an American, I just live here. And socialism (in all its forms: fascism, communism, democracy, etc) is not a clearly defined philosophy or a condition that any society can reach, it is a vague destination that some people want to push the society toward or away from. Just as people can call each-other "black" and "white" on the basis of relatively small differences in the shades of brown or palish pink in their skin, so can people call each-other different political labels relativistically. As an Anarcho-Capitalist, there are very few people I cannot call socialists / statists, and there is no reason why I shouldn't.

awful in what ? ....true in spain people live longer than you and they don't eat all this pills to extend their lifes, they apparently don't need them. same i france, japan, germany.... actually all most occidental contries. Those contries do all have a hleathcare system.... buh might be a coincidence.

Awful economically of course. You cannot measure most other national differences on a linear scale, and many differences between countries are cultural or genetic (which is also one of the reasons why the French or the Japanese live longer). As previously stated, the American healthcare system is demonstrably better than that of any other country (with the possible exception of Hong Kong and Singapore, which don't make for an appropriate comparison), and reducing the level of government involvement would make it better still.

ouuaaaaa valid news from free talk live, an obscure radio..... now i know where you get all this long expreience.

I was not making an argument on the merits of a radio show, I've linked to a list of arguments that I've previously made on another forum. It shows that Americans have far greater buying power than the Europeans, and have greater freedom in how they can use it. If some people choose to eat too much fatty meat, drink too much, not exercise, work more hours, have more children (which raises health-care costs quite a bit), etc then that is their Right to do so. Holding a gun to everyone's head and forcing them to live in a way that would make a country's health statistics look better does not make a country a better place to live!

[JLL]

Wow are you deluded JLL. A Chief of a tribe had every monopoly on violence. If he said go to war and you refused, you would either be killed by the tribe, or cast out from it. Denying reality is not an answer.

It is not me who is denying reality.

I am not talking about chiefs of tribes, I am talking about medieval Iceland. The "chiefs" had no power to force people into war, because the judicial system was privatized. Clearly you have no idea of what you're talking about.

Nether, it is simply reality. If you exist in any society, you do so by accepting the rules and responsibilities that society assigns to you.

So what you are saying is that by existing somewhere I accept any rules the majority occupying that region decides to implement? I just want to get this correct before further questions.

You're really stretching JLL. Stealing is an action of individuals against individuals, be that "individual" a person, a business, or a corporation. Tax is a legally levied responsibility given to every member of society. It was passed by a vote of the public, in order to provide large scale public services to the entire society as a whole. If you do not wish to enjoy those services you are free to leave the society, vote to have those services discontinued, or break the law and pay the penalties. You do not get to pick and chose what responsibilities you will assume or not.

I think it is you who is stretching.

What is society but a collection of individuals? You have already defined an individual so that it encompasses even corporations; why is a society then not an individual in this sense?

Tell me, do you think it is possible for a society to steal?

You are free to have whatever opinion you wish JLL, but the reality is these laws were passed because they were determined to be in the interest of the society precisely because the private sector FAILED to provide them.

No, that is incorrect. There are many examples where the private sector worked just fine, but it was still replaced by a state monopoly.

You enjoy the benefits of a society JLL. Did those benefits simply appear out of thin air? Do they exist without that society to provide them?

No, they did not appear out of thin air. And the public sector obviously does not exist without a society. I don't see how that is relevant to anything, though.

Like I said, me "enjoying" the benefits of something that I am forced to pay for does not change the fact that it is wrong to force people in the first place. You keep on coming back to this same point, but you fail to answer any of my questions properly. I will try to reformulate: if it is the enjoying of benefits that is the key here, then why is it not right for me (or several people like me, if one individual is not enough) to force you to give me money and then spend that money on something that I/we have decided to be beneficial?

The Government became involved in Police and Fire because your system was tried, and FAILED BADLY, so badly in fact that the public demanded that it be removed from the private sector's control. When large cities burned because the fire departments were busier fighting each other than fires, the public decided enough was enough. While this may indeed have taken place before you were born, you have spent your entire life benefiting from that fact. The SOCIETY at that time decided that it was necessary to enact legislation which provided services to all members of society, paid for by a fee charged to each person.

What you mean is that the majority of people decided that it was alright to take money from everyone to provide public police and fire services. You have yet to show how the majority can turn something immoral (stealing) into moral, however.

What if the society comprised 1,000 individuals, and 499 of them voted that police services must be funded through taxation? Would that be immoral or moral? What about 500? What about 501?

In that regard, it is EXACTLY the same as you paying for the service of car insurance, or paying for the service of receiving merchandise from a store, or the service of having someone come paint your house. You are paying for the services you benefit from simply by being a member of society.

You are confused. I don't care whether A is exactly the same as B in some regard, because your original statement was that A is exactly the same as B in all regards. Just because I give money to both a thief and salesman does not mean these are equal transactions.

I will say it once more: I can choose whether I want to pay to get my house painted, but I cannot choose whether I want to pay for police "services". This is the only difference I am interested in. I am not interested in the fact that both my house and a police uniform can be blue in color. This is irrelevant. What we are talking about is the freedom of choice.

As those services are provided for you regardless of whether you "desire" them or not, you are obligated, just as everyone else in society is, to help pay for them.

Why am I obligated? Because the majority has voted so? Am I obligated because might is right, or because I have a moral obligation? If a thief points a gun at your head and tells you to hand over your wallet, are you obligated to comply?

If you think you pay too much for them now, you truly do not want to see how much you would pay if that cost was not divided across the entirety of the population.

Are you saying that getting my house painted has to be done by the government?

But I did not vote to allow the mafia to tax me, now did I? We the people voted to accept the responsibility of paying for those services paid for with our taxes.

But I am not a part of "we the people", am I? I did not vote for any of the things you claim are beneficial for me.

What if the mafia moved next to you, and all your neighbors voted that it is okay for the mafia to offer protection services to you. Would that be okay? Clearly your opinion is that not everyone has to agree, just as long as the majority does.

If you wish to change that law, you are free to initiate petitions, and attempt to persuade others to support you, and attempt to get your choice of law passed. None of those options exist with the Mafia.

Of course they exist within the mafia. You can work from within the system if you want to change it. Of course, you may have to whack a few guys on your way to the top, but then, that's precisely how the government works too.

You also mention that if I don't agree with the government, I can also move somewhere else. But tell me, why is it me who should pack my things and leave and not the government? Why do they have a claim on my property?

[RighteousReason]

On the subject of "objective law" -- I am only beginning to research a bit on this concept and it is absolutely stunning to me how similar this idea is to the idea of "Friendly AI". I think this a crucial connection to be made.

The Randian concept of "objective law" falls somewhere between two separate Anarcho-Capitalist concepts: Natural Law and polycentric free market jurisprudence.

Polycentric law is just a way of passing off the problem of objective law to the free market, which is not really responsive to the subject.

This is a psychological thing you are doing (see Conversation Halters, maybe call this one "appeal to a free market solution" http://lesswrong.com...sation_halters/), you did it once before as well:

Libertarianism is an evolving science, not an orthodoxy - the two experiments can exist side-by-side, and may the better system win by attracting the greater share of the world's brains and capital.

And the response to that quoted statement is isomorphic to the one of objective law-- libertarianism isn't an evolving science--

an institution is either a government and it aggressively violates individual rights, or it is a private, voluntary institution.

Any "true" minarchism is functionally equivalent to anarchy. [or Anarcho-Capitalism]

And the isomorphic response on objective law: The law is either contaminated by a subjective element, or it is an objective, natural law. Any "true" objective law is functionally equivalent to natural law.

Of course that still leaves the problem of what the content of natural law actually is. The most basic explanation I have encountered is from http://www.tafol.org...letins/b07.html

An objectively derived law is one stemming not from the whim of legislators or bureaucrats but from a rational application of the principle of individual rights. Rights tie law to reality, because they are a recognition of a basic, unalterable fact, i.e., of "the conditions required by man's nature for his proper survival."

This is, unfortunately, extremely abstract-- exactly what rights provide "the conditions required by man's nature for his proper survival"? what exactly is man / man's nature? what exactly is man's "proper survival"?

and it does seem to me that Randian objective law is an essential requirement for Yudkowskian Friendly AI

Edited by RighteousReason, 04 April 2010 - 07:24 AM.

[Alex Libman]

Polycentric law is just a way of passing off the problem of objective law to the free market, which is not really responsive to the subject.

The free market is very responsive to the legal environment! Are individuals and corporations are just as likely to set up shop in North Korea as they are in South Korea, or even in Cleveland as they are in Houston?! The human history is filled with examples of people moving from place to place in search of better economic opportunity, which mostly tends to depend on the political environment, and without any red tape to get in your way leaving a government in the 21st century can be as easy as boarding a bus or phoning a helicopter taxi to whisk you away from their jurisdiction!

Does your notion of Objective Law require us to get rid of all state and local rights and conquer Mexico, Canada, and then the rest of the world lest their laws are different from ours?! Of course not! Law has always been polycentric, just not polycentric enough to make it responsive to market signals due to restriction on travel / movement of capital and artificial top-down homogenization achieved through government force (ex. the state and Federal government, United Nations, etc). There is no rational reason why legal jurisdictions, arbitration agencies, private defense agencies, and private incarceration agencies can't be open to greater market competition.

This is a psychological thing you are doing (see Conversation Halters, maybe call this one "appeal to a free market solution" http://lesswrong.com...sation_halters/) [...]

An appeal to a free market solution is an appeal to a scientific method. The market is one giant experiment laboratory where everyone is free to try, but not everyone will be able to achieve functional results, with the most historically-successful ideas growing in popularity and evolving, while discredited errors eventual fall into extinction. When someone makes an "appeal to a free market solution" in a conversation, it can mean "we are free to disagree, because our ideas do not necessarily contradict each-other". I can try Anarcho-Capitalism here, you can try Objectivism there, and some time after Pamela Geller nukes Mecca the merits of my system will be a lot more difficult to deny.


(Gotta run - this conversation is to be continued on a more serious level later.)

Edited by Alex Libman, 04 April 2010 - 10:15 AM.

[Heliotrope]

Can't the U.S. print its own money rather than borrowing it? That we we would pay $0 interest charges.

That's the nuclear option, though. It will essentially mean that we can pay all our creditors with cheap dollars.
That will drag them into trouble, start a trade war ...
And if say China decides to dump US securities, we're in for a whole lot of inflation, much more than planned for.
Sure, they will get hurt too, but it's not clear if anyone will be the victor.

What we have now is the economic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Congress pushed Healthcare into Law with the Nuclear Option. Maybe we should use nuclear option to pay off the debts.

China is America's largest creditor. I think U.S. owes People's Republic of China about $800 Billion. If for short term, the gov prints $800,000,000,000.00 can't we pay off the Chinese?

one step closer to debt free, but still in a MAD situation? bad situation.

Heaven forbid, if any war starts, then there's excuse to not pay. Such as 2nd Korean war, Chinese and N.K invade South Korea, "You kill us, we won't pay debts." "If you start war, we won't pay!"

Edited by Heliotrope, 04 April 2010 - 11:38 AM.

[bobdrake12]

Congress pushed Healthcare into Law with the Nuclear Option. Maybe we should use nuclear option to pay off the debts.

China is America's largest creditor. I think U.S. owes People's Republic of China about $800 Billion. If for short term, the gov prints $800,000,000,000.00 can't we pay off the Chinese?

one step closer to debt free, but still in a MAD situation? bad situation.

Heaven forbid, if any war starts, then there's excuse to not pay. Such as 2nd Korean war, Chinese and N.K invade South Korea, "You kill us, we won't pay debts." "If you start war, we won't pay!"

Heliotrope,

As an sovereign country, we used to issue our own money.

Per The U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8 - Powers of Congress:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

In any event, as a country, we cannot continue to:

1) Spend beyond our means:



2) Afford the luxury of paying the interest on an ever increasing, massive national debt:

Edited by bobdrake12, 04 April 2010 - 03:00 PM.

[RighteousReason]

Polycentric law is just a way of passing off the problem of objective law to the free market, which is not really responsive to the subject.

The free market is very responsive to the legal environment! Are individuals and corporations are just as likely to set up shop in North Korea as they are in South Korea, or even in Cleveland as they are in Houston?! The human history is filled with examples of people moving from place to place in search of better economic opportunity, which mostly tends to depend on the political environment, and without any red tape to get in your way leaving a government in the 21st century can be as easy as boarding a bus or phoning a helicopter taxi to whisk you away from their jurisdiction!

Does your notion of Objective Law require us to get rid of all state and local rights and conquer Mexico, Canada, and then the rest of the world lest their laws are different from ours?! Of course not! Law has always been polycentric, just not polycentric enough to make it responsive to market signals due to restriction on travel / movement of capital and artificial top-down homogenization achieved through government force (ex. the state and Federal government, United Nations, etc). There is no rational reason why legal jurisdictions, arbitration agencies, private defense agencies, and private incarceration agencies can't be open to greater market competition.

This is a psychological thing you are doing (see Conversation Halters, maybe call this one "appeal to a free market solution" http://lesswrong.com...sation_halters/) [...]

An appeal to a free market solution is an appeal to a scientific method. The market is one giant experiment laboratory where everyone is free to try, but not everyone will be able to achieve functional results, with the most historically-successful ideas growing in popularity and evolving, while discredited errors eventual fall into extinction. When someone makes an "appeal to a free market solution" in a conversation, it can mean "we are free to disagree, because our ideas do not necessarily contradict each-other". I can try Anarcho-Capitalism here, you can try Objectivism there, and some time after Pamela Geller nukes Mecca the merits of my system will be a lot more difficult to deny.


(Gotta run - this conversation is to be continued on a more serious level later.)

evidently you missed my point.

It isn't really helpful or relevant to say that objective law is the process of using the free market to figure out what objective law is. What if on your biology exam when asked about the Krebs cycle you simply wrote that the Krebs cycle is- and should be!- whatever the free market decides the Krebs cycle is! Well that's a very clever, warm and fuzzy answer, as I really do love the free market, but I'm going to have to fail you on that question. The correct answer is a specific series of chemical equations.

Not only that, but to have Anarcho-Capitalism requires objective law, polycentric law will not work for this system-- otherwise you end up with violations of the NAP-- which leaves you with something that is not really anarchy at all, but a polycentric totalitarianism like Somalia -- as any system of law is either objective and upholds the rights of an individual, or it has a subjective element and thus aggressively violates individual rights-- this is the same as saying the following:

an institution is either a government and it aggressively violates individual rights, or it is a private, voluntary institution.

Edited by RighteousReason, 04 April 2010 - 04:05 PM.

[RighteousReason]

For starters the US has 56 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities in the Social Security program alone"

56 trillion? You sure its not 5.6?

hmm sort of pulled that out of my ass... I wrote a paper about all this 5 years ago in high school.

Here is what I said then (this was before I had any clue about politics and had no leaning whatsoever to the left or right)

The national debt is a major economic problem because we are promising money that we simply don’t have. Keynes believed that although the government actually should run deficits during recessions, the debt should be offset by surpluses gathered during prosperous times. Despite this, the United States government has continued to increase the debt through good times, and especially bad times. If we ignore the problem, the debt will not just go away, but continue to increase until our economy and society are overrun.

Currently, the national debt is over 7,000,000,000,000 dollars. On top of this huge amount, nearly 2 billion dollars of debt is accumulated each day. If every man, woman, and child were given equal portions of the debt, each person in America would owe over 25,000 dollars! Another disturbing factor that makes the debt even more difficult of a problem is that the debt is actually earning interest. In 2004, America paid 322 billion dollars on interest payments alone to the national debt. This is more than five times the amount of money spent on education, and more money spent than on all but two departments of the government. The scope of this problem is enormous; if all taxes in America were doubled, or if the entire department of defense and the armed forces were completely shut down, neither of these would provide enough money to solve the problem alone. The figure of seven trillion does not even do justice to the actual amount of debt. Including “hidden” debts of unfunded liabilities (that is, the difference, valued in today's dollars, between what current law requires the government to pay and what current law provides in projected tax revenues), the debt comes out to be closer to 53 trillion dollars. With an approximate GDP of $11 trillion in the United States today, that is almost 500 percent of our GDP owed in national debt!

The two major contributors to the national debt are Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is a social insurance program that covers most of the United States’ work force. It is usually a basic retirement program, to which other benefits (such as disability) are added. The United States has $12.7 trillion dollars promised in retirement benefits in Social Security that cannot be paid. Again, this figure alone is more than the entire United States GDP. The magnitude of debt in Medicare is even more staggering. Medicare is a federal health program for retirees and the disabled. Currently there is over $30 trillion in unfunded liabilities for people now working and in the system. This also takes into account 7 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities for the new prescription drug program going into effect in 2006. The amount of the unfunded liabilities for the prescription drug program alone is almost equal to the current national debt. One of the biggest reasons these figures are significant is that the baby boomers, those Americans born between 1946 and 1964, account for a very sizable portion of the work force. This is a major issue because the baby boomers are going to be reaching retirement age very soon, and these unfunded liabilities are going to be due. That means that all those trillions and trillions of dollars that have been promised to up and coming retirees will not be able to be paid.

http://www.enterstag...03/1003debt.htm
http://www.factcheck...article139.html
http://www.magnolia..../aphbudget.html
http://www.federalbudget.com/
http://zfacts.com/p/...ional-debt.html
http://www.businessf...com/debt01.html
http://www.ncpa.org/.../pd030999d.html
http://www.mises.org...px?control=1423
http://www.straightd...tionaldebt.html
http://www3.uakron.e...44/debt_hw.html
http://www.whatreall....com/ndebt.html
http://www.independe...l.asp?newsID=31

Here are some of the updated figures:

The national debt has now passed $12.3 trillion. (Noting how quickly this number has been increasing, the national debt first passed $7.0 trillion January 15, 2004, and then passed the $8.0 trillion mark October 18, 2005.) Consequently, on January 28, 2010, the United States Senate agreed to raise the legal limit on government borrowing to a record $14.3 trillion — an increrase $1.9 trillion or 13 percent. Raising the ceiling imposed on the national debt has now become a yawn-producing vote in the Congress. Because of the Treasury's financial legerdemain, the real number is frequently slightly above this ceiling.

The ratio of national debt to Gross Domestic Prouct (GDP) is a critical measurement. With the GDP currently $14.4 trillion, the national debt is fast-approaching the 90 percent tape — the ratio beyond which even Third World nations fear to tread.

Another critical ratio is the relationship between the Federal Budget and the national debt. The Federal Budget for FY-2011 currently under consideration is $3.8 trillion. This projects a deficit of $1.3 trillion or 9.0 percent of GDP. (The current deficit for FY-2010 is approximately $1.6 trillion.) The Administration's announced goal is to reduce the annual deficit to 3.0 percent of GDP — the long-term level economists believe is the highest sustainable.

Foreign governments and investors hold $3.43 trillion of this debt — approximately 24 percent of our GDP. The major creditors are the People's Republic of China ($798.9 billion), Japan ($751.5 billion), the United Kingdom ($249.3 billion), OPEC nations ($185.3 billion), and Caribbean banking centers ($171.7 billion); even Russia currently holds $118.0 billion of the US national debt.

Per capita, the national debt is more than $40,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The interest costs to service this debt is in excess of $383 billion a year (FY-2009) — approximately 20 percent of our total tax revenues. The interest costs are now more than the Federal government spends on homeland security, education, environment, housing, veterans programs, transportation and agriculture combined. Our annual appropriations for virtually all other Federal activities pale in contrast with the line item for Federal debt service.

http://www.businessf...com/debt01.html


The figure for total unfunded debts that I have more recently seen floating around is about 100 trillion.

neato:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

[Alex Libman]

evidently you missed my point. [...]

I am very explicit in defining and defending what I believe the objective Natural Law ought to be, and why I believe the overwhelming majority of people (who will control an even greater fraction of the world's resources) will find it in their best interest to obey and help enforce it. What I am vague on are the things that would be silly for me to speculate about because they depend on subjective human factors: what types of contracts people will choose to enter into, how the various arbitration agencies will select their juries, what methods of restitution payment enforcement private incarceration establishments will find most effective, etc.

Also, you need to keep in mind that Anarcho-Capitalism isn't out to destroy the existing governments, only to be able to have the choice of leaving / seceding from them on private property to try something different, and grow organically by attracting ever-more brains and capital if we are successful. If I am wrong and we end up being as bad as Somalia, then why would anyone else move to / invest in our society?

Edited by Alex Libman, 04 April 2010 - 05:08 PM.

[RighteousReason]

evidently you missed my point. [...]

I am very explicit in defining and defending what I believe the objective Natural Law ought to be, and why I believe the overwhelming majority of people (who will control an even greater fraction of the world's resources) will find it in their best interest to obey and help enforce it. What I am vague on are the things that would be silly for me to speculate about because they depend on subjective human factors: what types of contracts people will choose to enter into, how the various arbitration agencies will select their juries, what methods of restitution payment enforcement private incarceration establishments will find most effective, etc.

Also, you need to keep in mind that Anarcho-Capitalism isn't out to destroy the existing governments, only to be able to have the choice of leaving / seceding from them on private property to try something different, and grow organically by attracting ever-more brains and capital if we are successful. If I am wrong and we end up being as bad as Somalia, then why would anyone else move to / invest in our society?

well obviously we aren't having any type of conversation, I'm not even sure why you are quoting me, as if this were a response to me in any way

[Alex Libman]

Alright, so we agree to disagree. (At least until you find the time and the mental effort to do more research on emergence in economics and jurisprudence.)

In the meantime... This is an ObamaCare thread! Let's cooperate in debunking socialist lies and disinformation instead!

Edited by Alex Libman, 05 April 2010 - 09:26 AM.

[RighteousReason]

Alright, so we agree to disagree. (At least until you find the time and the mental effort to do more research on emergence in economics and jurisprudence.)

http://lesswrong.com...sation_halters/

Appeal to harmony - "Let's agree to disagree." If you keep talking, you're being quarrelsome.

A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World contains a nice example:

As a final example, a buffer overflow checker flagged a bunch of errors of the form

unsigned p[4]; ... p[4] = 1;

"No, ANSI lets you write 1 past the end of the array."

After heated argument, the programmer said, "We'll have to agree to disagree."

(It helps to know that this is forbidden by the C and C++ Standards. This rule is so well-known among programmers that if this guy were a physicist, he may as well have said, "No, neutrons are positively charged.")

This is a seriously poor way to talk to someone; a conversation halter appeal to harmony followed by some arrogant, sniping reference. I perfectly understand the concept of emergence you are referring to, why would you assume otherwise? My argument is not that objective law is incompatible with emergence, the free market, or even polycentrism, just that emergent free-market polycentric law is not necessarily objective law, and that these concepts are not part of the definition of what objective law actually is.

Edited by RighteousReason, 05 April 2010 - 01:12 PM.

[Alex Libman]

Great, the next thing you'll see is crazed "Objectivists" running around holding people at gunpoint and forcing them into a structured debate out of context, while at the same time refusing to make the slightest mental effort to comprehend their responses...

And all arrays are pointers anyway. Pointer safety rules are for commies! Pointing at someone does not constitute an act of aggression. Use of a malloc() does not constitute an enforceable contract to use free()! The free market will naturally filter out all programs that don't use memory correctly!

[RighteousReason]

Great, the next thing you'll see is crazed "Objectivists" running around holding people at gunpoint and forcing them into a structured debate out of context, while at the same time refusing to make the slightest mental effort to comprehend their responses...

And all arrays are pointers anyway. Pointer safety rules are for commies! Pointing at someone does not constitute an act of aggression. Use of a malloc() does not constitute an enforceable contract to use free()! The free market will naturally filter out all programs that don't use memory correctly!

[AdamSummerfield]

Interesting. Alex and RR seem to be libertarians, capitalists (there may be some subtle difference I'm unaware of)...
I have a couple of questions for you: what is your opinion on this - specifically those below the poverty line increased from 11% to 18%.
Secondly, if the free market achieved what it is thought to, why are there homeless people? Surely these people have a demand - for affordable, albeit low-grade housing. So why can't the market seem to provide it for them?